The EVGA e-GeForce 9800 GTX is pitted against their e-GeForce 8800 GTX with ACS3 cooling, which debuted in November, 2006 and is still going strong - especially when it was paired with another GeForce 8800 GTX from MSI.
Antialiasing was set to "Override any application setting" in the driver for Oblivion.
Anisotropic filtering was set to 8x in the driver for Oblivion.
GAME SETTINGS
In-game graphics settings that were used during testing are documented here. Maximum quality settings were enabled in BioShock, Call of Duty 4, F.E.A.R., and Oblivion. Crysis was tested at medium graphics settings. All in-game settings in Dark Messiah were at their maximum quality with the exception of texture detail, which was set to the recommended high instead of very high.